Milestone

The floor is on.

A few consecutive days of fine weather gave me the opportunity to complete the ground floor frame, build the floor joists and place the plywood floor.

The plywood floor is a large bracing diaphram and will be eventually covered with a solid wood flooring. A conventional ceiling will be installed under the joists; either timber sarking or plastered gib board. I was pleased to discover that the original building lines at the floor level are within +/- 5mm and  floor square and  level!

Ground floor frame

Two fine days in the last two weeks!!! Work proceeds slowly between frequent rain showers and hail storms. No let up forecasted :-(

The Timbercrete walls provide much of the load bearing sructure for the upper storey and roof. The ground floor frame provides support in the central section of the building and is married into the Timbercrete structure. This hybird structure is  somewhat novel, so lots of tea breaks and some head scratching required. The tractor FEL boom extension is taking care of all the heavy lifting and is nifty enough to drive around "inside".   I'm pretty happy with the way my first timber peg joints are coming together. I have discovered that the tenon holes can be offset by as much as 4mm and drawn in by a heavy hammer and tappered peg end.